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/ 25 May 2008

Govt: Colombia’s top Farc commander is dead

The founder and chief commander of Colombia’s Farc rebel force, Manuel Marulanda, has died after more than 40 years fighting the state from jungle and mountain camps. If confirmed, the death of Manuel Marulanda, who organised the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas in the 1960s, would be the heaviest blow yet to Latin America’s oldest insurgency.

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/ 15 April 2008

Thousands evacuated as Colombian volcano erupts

Thousands of Colombians were evacuated around the Nevado del Huila volcano in the south-west part of the country on Tuesday after an eruption of ash and gas that caused no damage but put authorities on high alert. ”Constant monitoring of the situation will be maintained,” said a statement from Colombia’s Interior Ministry.

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/ 2 March 2008

Colombia says it kills Farc commander in Ecuador

Colombia’s military said on Saturday its troops had killed a top rebel commander in an attack on a jungle camp across the border in Ecuador in a severe blow to Latin America’s oldest guerrilla insurgency. Raul Reyes, one of seven members of the secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, was killed in an operation that included air strikes and fighting with rebels across the border.

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/ 14 January 2008

Ex-Colombian hostage reunited with son

A Colombian woman freed last week after six years as a rebel hostage arrived in Bogota on Sunday and headed straight for a reunion with her son, Emmanuel, born in a jungle camp and then taken away by her captors. A slightly dazed Clara Rojas arrived from Caracas, where she had been since leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez brokered her release.

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/ 10 January 2008

Colombia again attempts hostage handover

An airborne operation to pluck two hostages from their rebel captors deep in the Colombian jungle lurched back to life on Thursday, after a botched handover attempt collapsed 10 days ago. Two Venezuelan helicopters departed for Colombia at dawn, said a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

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/ 26 November 2007

Colombia, Venezuela face crisis in relations

Colombia and Venezuela faced the worst crisis in their relations in years on Monday after the Colombian president accused Venezuela of seeking to install a Marxist regime in his country and Caracas ”froze” relations between the two countries. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said earlier he was putting bilateral ties in a ”freezer”.

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/ 25 October 2006

Radio gives hostages a lifeline

It is 2am on Sunday and the phones never stop ringing at the Caracol radio station in northern Bogota. The light banter that normally entertains listeners to the graveyard shift is missing. This weekly radio programme, Voices of Kidnapping, reaches out to the thousands of hostages held by illegal armed groups across Colombia.

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/ 18 May 2006

Alleged drug kingpin arrested in Brazil

One of the world’s most hunted drug traffickers — whose criminal organisation compared in size to that of late drug lord Pablo Escobar — has been arrested in Brazil as part of a major international bust. Brazilian authorities said on Wednesday that Colombian-born Pablo Rayo-Montano, who had been on the run for a decade, was captured the day before at his home in São Paulo.

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/ 29 October 2005

Tropical Storm Beta becomes hurricane

Beta was upgraded to a hurricane by the United States National Hurricane Centre early on Saturday as it continued to whip the Colombian island of Providencia with high winds and rain. The hurricane is expected to move north-northwest and slam into Central America by Sunday as a category-two storm.

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/ 11 August 2005

Thirty rebels killed in Columbia

At least 30 rebels died in an aerial bombardment of their camps in northwestern Colombia, authorities said on Wednesday. Colombian Air Force combat aircraft bombed three rural areas along a border between the provinces of Antioquia and Choco, west of Medellin, where rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) were camped.

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/ 20 July 2005

Do the dishes or I’ll divorce you

Failure to help with the kids and the dishes could soon be grounds for divorce in Colombia, if a proposed law gets passed. ”Men treat women like slaves who wash the dishes while they relax,” said Senator Carlos Moreno de Caro, the Bill’s author. ”This injustice has to end,” he said.

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/ 17 May 2005

Colombian town declares gossip a crime

A Colombian town has taken a hard line against gossip, with fines of up to  000 (R38 200) and three years in jail. ”Residents come out with things that they have no reason to say, that are mere gossip and that have even gotten people killed,” said Margoth Morales, city manager of Iconozo.

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/ 13 May 2005

Bad news piles up in Colombia but US unfazed

Resilient rebels. Rebounding drug crops. Rogue American soldiers snared in plots to smuggle cocaine and funnel stolen ammunition toparamilitary death squads. The bad news has been piling up fast, almost five years after the United States began doling out -billion under its Plan Colombia aid programme to wipe out cocaine and heroin production and crush a long-running leftist insurgency.

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/ 11 April 2005

Football fan wins DIM name change

A Colombian football fan has won the right to change his name to that of his favourite club, but only after a tortuous seven-year legal battle. The ruling handed down on Friday by the country’s Constitutional Court allows the 55-year-old supporter to call himself Deportivo Independiente Medellin Giraldo Zuluaga.

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/ 15 March 2005

UN has bad news for cocaine users

A top United Nations anti-drug official has predicted cocaine prices in the United States and Europe will rise next year, reflecting the fruits of a six-year, US-funded effort to eradicate drug production in Colombia. ”Considering Colombia supplies 80% of the world cocaine market, we think prices are going to rise starting in 2006,” the official said.

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/ 18 February 2005

South American row under control

The presidents of Colombia and Venezuela met in Caracas this week to patch up frazzled relations after the worst diplomatic row between the South American neighbours for decades. Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe was greeted with a 21-gun salute on his arrival in Caracas to meet Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, who barely a month ago had threatened to break off commercial and diplomatic relations.

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/ 11 February 2005

Tutu has message of hope for Colombia

Peace is possible in Colombia despite its four decades of civil war, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on Thursday, pointing to harmony achieved in South Africa after decades of racial strife under apartheid. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate gave the optimistic outlook during a speech at a peace symposium in the south-western city of Cali.

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/ 15 November 2004

Quake hits Colombian coast

An earthquake measuring 6,7 on the Richter scale hit the west coast of Colombia early on Monday, Colombian officials said, adding that no deaths have been reported from the quake thus far. The quake hit at 4.06am local time, according to Julian Villarroel, director of Colombia’s Institute of Geology and Mining.